Abstract. We study some restrictions associated with the mechanisms for structuring and modularising specifications in the B abstract machine notation. We propose an extension of the language that allows one to specify machines whose constituent modules (other abstract machines) may change dynamically, i.e., at run time. In this way, we increase the expressiveness of B by adding support for a common activity of the current systems design practice. The extensions were made without having to make considerable changes in the semantics of standard B. We provide some examples to show the increased expressive power, and argue that our proposed extensions respect the methodological principles of the B method.

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Formal methods have been applied to reactive systems in order to capture errors early on in the development life-cycle and reduce redesign costs. The Reactive Systems Development Support (RSDS) method provides support for the analysis and design of reactive systems and generates code from these specifications. An RSDS system is specified by a set of invariants, a set of statemachines and a Data Control Flow Diagram (DCFD), which are then verified using the B theorem-prover. B however requires user interaction and is not capable of proving temporal properties easily. This thesis extends RSDS by integrating model checking so that temporal properties can be verified. The model checker used is the Symbolic Model Verifier (SMV). There are two distinct semantic views of statemachines in RSDS: the coarse-grain and the fine-grain, with the key difference between them being the granularity of a step. We describe a translation to SMV for each semantic view and we guarantee the quality of the translations by formally proving their correctness. This proof is a vital part in our provision of transparent formal method support for system design. To overcome the state explosion problem of model checking, we propose some natural ways of using the RSDS decomposition techniques for dividing the system

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